Hacker Cinema
The Loved One
1965 · Film · 122 min
Directed by Tony Richardson
The suicide of his expatriate uncle draws Englishman and poet Dennis Barlow into California's booming funeral industry.
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4 comments on Hacker News
What of it? The Loved One (1948) was a bit of a squib at best, tonally a throwback to the earlier Waugh. It’s not very good (imho) so you can see why Terry Southern - who had not much taste - liked it enough to make a film of it, also unsuccessful.
The Sword of Honour Trilogy written over the next decade or so is much more representative of the later Waugh: the original article has sketched him out correctly.
The general continuity in Waugh’s life and writing is contempt for modernity: a turn to religion makes perfect sense in that light.
The diaries are worth reading too. He really was quite an unpleasant fellow, as well as a fine writer.
The 1965 movie The Loved One based on Waugh's book is one of my favorites.
After Many a Summer Dies a Swan is perhaps best remembered today for having been mentioned in Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, but it's definitely worth reading. The 1950s saw a number of British ex-pats in Los Angles writing novels about their experiences. Isherwood's novel is another classic of the genre although the best of the lot, in my opinion, is Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (just skip the atrocious movie of the same title which was so bad, Waugh stipulated that Hollywood would never again get to film his work).
And while we're at it, somebody needs to do the cryonics re-make of the not-so-classic 1960's movie "The Loved One":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-edybFkBiO4 -- Rod Steiger as Mr. Joyboy, the masterful mortician at work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoZ5dTQa_2E -- Liberace as a funeral home salesperson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaGtDJo5R5o -- Aimee Thanatogenos visits Mr. Joyboy and his mother